Another week

When they say this is the rainy season, they are not joking. It's pouring down rain now, even though it was sunny and hot this morning. Tom and I went to visit a nearby school to meet the members of its anti-AIDS club. It was a 45 minute uphill walk, with pretty views across the valley to our own town on the opposite hill. We walked past tidy mud brick houses with little gardens that looked like the pages of a fairy-tale, minus the banana trees and sorghum fields on either side. We spoke to lots of kids in kinyarwanda, saying what our names were, asking them theirs, and saying, no, we aren't going to give you money. I shook lots of little hands, like I do every day, which is probably why I have conjunctivitis right now. Oh well.

So, we got to our secondary school, which is on top of the hill. Like lots of places in Rwanda, I find it almost impossibly beautiful. Most of the time, when I comment on how pretty a place is, people seem bemused by it, like, "this? you think this is pretty? why?" Anyway, when we got to the school, we found that the club had actually started earlier than we thought, and the peer educator was already at the front of the packed classroom (all the benches were more than full with over 60 kids), nonchalantly holding a hand-carved wooden penis model, which he occasionally knocked against a desk like a gavel when the kids were getting too loud.

I was surprised at how much I could follow of the conversation in Kinyarwanda. They were talking about the reproductive system, why girls have their period, the difference between sperm and semen, and they even asked me directly if girls could have erections. It sort of warmed my heart, especially when they followed all this information with practical talk about how to prevent HIV, teen pregnancy, and other unpleasant things. I'm used to hearing about the ABCs of HIV prevention -- abstinence, be faithful, and use condoms, and often hear about condoms falling off the radar. However, today I learned that in this club, they talk about abstinence, faithfulness, condom use, and education. I'm excited to visit again next week.

Things haven't been completely smooth this week. I still don't have a lot of definition in my job, and I haven't been able to meet a lot of the people I need to. It can be really hard to be here, to know there is so much work to be done, and not be able to get started. Luckily, next week is looking busier than the last, and I'm excited.